"Aaaaahahahaaha! Burn! Burn to the grouuuund! Burrrrrn!" Izzy cackled manically, standing upon a heap of corpses, harshly lit by the flames of her burning victims, her smile toothy and her eyes dark.
Don't worry, all of the corpses were robots. And half of the burning pile was probably tennis balls anyway.
The girls had found the elevator taking them from Sprout's secret bunker to Sprout's less-secret penthouse suite in Zephyr Heights, whose most notable feature was the excellent view of the entire city being overrun by Recalloids. Unfortunately for the forces of robot, the trio rapidly descended the complex by leaping from Sprout's balcony jacuzzi and the Recalloids were thus set upon not only by Vengeful Zephyrina and Indignant Pipperoni, but by Horn-Bonked Izzy, who found her mood marginally improving with each of the three hundred and forty two Recalloids she had hitherto destroyed within the span of fifteen minutes. Unfortunately for everyone, once the pain in her horn had sufficiently faded, she became much more carefree in wildly hurling magic around. She may not have been able to do anything specific, but she was absolutely able to cause general mayhem by just firing and forgetting.
"I-Izzy, do ya think you're going a bit ham?" Pipp dared to ask. She stepped too close to the smoldering pile of robots, hissed (as did her hoof), and backed away, shaking her smoking hoof in pain.
"Smells more like chicken!" Izzy retorted, then abruptly returned to her normal, vacant expression, looking worried. "... I didn't fry any pegasuseseses, did I?"
"We're not chickens!!" Pipp squawked. "And no, everyone flew the coop --" she paused and winced. "Dang it, I flew right into that one --" She clucked in indignation. "I'm gonna shut up."
"How do we know what ham and chicken are..." Izzy mumbled to the sky with suspicious eyes.
"We can verify casualties later!" Zipp admonished. "There are more! A lot more!"
And indeed, Recalloids were assembling into a vague wall around the remnants of the city block, like a blockade.
"We must be priority one," Pipp whimpered, giving Izzy a blaming glance.
"Izzy must be priority one," Zipp corrected. "She's like Augeron Wick, we're more like those bumbling robots from that space movie with the laser swords."
"TO THE CASTLE!!" Izzy declared, blasting a wave through a random corner of the blockade and charging off.
"I guess your horn must be feeling better!!" Pipp cried as she and Zipp followed.
"How did that dopey little momma's boy sneak so many weaseling robots right under our very nosy noses?!" Izzy yelled, teleporting through an Honest☆Harmonoid and kicking her right in the butt to knock her off the royal plateau. There was a sizzling hissing sound and a bunch of black smoke came up from over the edge.
"You mean -- your - very nosey nose," Pipp panted, darting in a figure eight as two Loyal☆Harmonoids circled around her. "Some of us -- keep our noses --" She suddenly dove and escaped to the side as the two of them pounced, crashed into each other, and fell apart in a cloud of smoke. "-- clean!" Pipp landed, shaking her mane.
Izzy ducked as a Cheerful☆ sailed right over her head, paused in midair, shrugged, and dropped off the plateau with a monotone "waaa-hee-hoo-hooeeeeey."
Izzy spun around in alarm at the sound of smashing behind her instead of below her. Zipp was pinballing back and forth between a dozen Recalloids, leaving dents in their ribs and heads with each bounce. She pirouetted off the last one and landed as they all collapsed and burst into scrap at once. "This is awesome!" She nearly squeed. "I mean, uh, dang, it's gonna break the royal bank account to fix all of this devastation."
"That's gonna be a lot of lemonade," Izzy conjectured, hopping onto a Generous☆'s punch like a martial arts master, skipping up its foreleg, jerking her whole body to dodge the phoomp! of a tennis ball, and taking its head off with a swish of her pipe-tempered battle-forged horn.
"Lemonade won't cut it," Pipp rasped. "AIIE!" She received a tackle from a Loyal☆, spun in the air with it, and hurled it off into the distance. "I'm gonna be running charity concerts for months! ACK..!" She took a second tackle and threw it again. "And you better not dare to screw any of 'em up, Izzy. I'll sue you." This time she twirled, causing Loyal☆ to slide right over her and plant itself right inside the face of a huge digital Pipp on a nearby building. "Aaaah! That's my good side!!" she whined.
"... Which one's your good side?" Zipp raised an eyebrow, punching a hole in a Merciful☆'s face without looking.
"My whole face is my good side? Like duuh?" Pipp whined, flying in circles with an Honest☆ trying to catch her with some ultramodern megafiber lasso. After a dodge, Pipp grabbed the lasso and flew off, with the Honest☆ repeating "Eeyyiiip yip yip yip yip yip!", finishing with "hoosuappuru da ne!" as she dragged it off of the cliffside and let go.
"Pipp is pretty cute," Izzy praised, magically swatting Recalloids out of the air as they came too close, without looking.
Zipp stood on a robot and ripped its throat open with her teeth. "As long as she flosses her teeth," she wrinkled her nose, spitting out bits of plastic. "She livestreams so often she sometimes forgets."
"Ewww!" Izzy stuck her tongue out in disgust as Zipp cackled.
What felt like an eternity later, the girls looked over the city from the royal plateau, and surveyed the damage.
"How... many robots... did we fight?" Izzy panted with an exhausted, sleepy smile, her horn sputtering and flickering.
"Over nine thousand," Zipp shrugged, not winded at all.
"What..! Nine thousand!" Pipp balked at her, while laying on her back like she was making snow pegasuses.
"Izzy alone must've taken out about 5K," Zipp estimated, furrowing her brows. "Did we see a single Kind☆?"
"They made me mad," Izzy justified. "They friendship-signaled, they pushed products from sleazy Big Beeswax, they had the nerve to lock me up in a jail for cute little pegasus fillies like you girls and make me bonk my horn on the way out, and after all that it turns out the cheap mass-produced models are practically made outta paper compared to the prototypes?! Nuh-uh. Momma Izzy had enough." She stamped a hoof to accentuate, making the sisters shudder.
"Well," Pipp stood up, stretched like a cat, and looked back at her home, "At least the castle is intact... Let's do a quick fly-around."
As soon as they came into the business district, their ears perked in alarm at the sound of a stallion groaning and a weird, metal clanging sound. He stumbled around the corner. "My leg," he groaned, "I stepped in a bucket and I can't get my hoof back out..." They looked down at the bucket on his hoof and all lowered their heads with closed eyes and a sputtering sigh.
Pipp fluttered up to examine a busted digital billboard. "Hm, come to think of it, we might be able to salvage some of the robot parts for repairs," she considered. "Gotta be tons of high-grade circuity currently scattered all over the city." She snorted steam out her nose and spread her forehooves wide, frogs up. "Hellooooo? There's a sand shortage, peeeeopllllle."
"Yeah, megalomaniacal tyrants don't seem to be affected by the depletion of natural resources," Zipp frowned, hovering between her and Izzy a story down. "But there might be too much custom or proprietary stuff. It might not be compatible, and if it was, we might have to go through a lot of legal tape, lest we violate the intellectual property of a guy who just attempted a coup."
"They're too roundy," Izzy called up with authority. "Your buildings are made outta flat."
They both stared at her.
"What?" she blinked up at them. "You're not gonna use those pony head-shaped bits of plastic to make nothin'. Are ya?" She tilted her head.
Pipp's phone buzzed and began singing. I want to go bliiiind in your light! it bellowed in her voice. She jumped with a yelp, rolling and spinning back down to the ground, clumsily juggling her phone in her hooves and wings before securing it and landing elegantly.
Zipp landed nearby and shared a look with Izzy. Only Pipp would make herself her ring tone, the look said.
Pipp put the phone on speaker mode. "Y'ello, Princess Pipp and associates speaking, and no I'm not kidnapped anymore. Are you calling in regards to the recent robot invasion of Zephyr Heights?"
"It's Sunny, I'm really glad that you're okay, and yeah, I was wondering about that," came the response. "Maretime Bay got hit too. Hitch and I just earned a key to the city, sure had our hooves full doing it though. Good thing I've got these magical wings and horn I can summon at will that bring the sun's wrath down on anything that mildly displeases me. We also have a very spirited and well-dressed Kind☆Harmonoid who says you're her friends and who is currently braiding my hair... Is everyone alright?"
"The three of us are fine, and it was more exercise than anything," Zipp leaned in and offered. Izzy nodded with an evil grin while Pipp frowned. "We're checking the damage right now and don't know of any casualties."
Distant shouting could be heard from the phone.
"Are - you - all - okay!" Izzy leaned in and shouted. "Who's - yelling!" Pipp leaned away from her with an outraged face.
"Whoa-whoa-whoa," Sunny objected. "You mean besides you? That's Sprout," she sighed. "Hitch is taking him in. Did he make the robots?"
"Who'd'ya think made the robots?" Pipp sassed. "It's a little complicated but it's kind of our fault."
"He - invested - in - a - bunch - of - companies - which - got- rich - from - the - unified - market - and - used - them - to - make - robots!" Izzy hollered.
"... Has Izzy ever used a phone before?" Sunny questioned after a pause.
"Sheeeee has one..." Pipp volunteered.
"That's not what I asked," Sunny complained. "Anyway. Hitch and I are fine, Kind☆ says she has only superficial injuries, but what're we gonna do about all the damage to both cities?"
"Make that jerk Sprout pay for it," Pipp answered at once. "He's probably gonna get booted off all the boards of directors or whatever, but I'm sure he's got enough left to cover it. The rest will have to come outta the royal funds and whatever Maretime Bay uses for civic projects..."
They heard Sunny groan in frustration. "We're pretty well-off, but that's gonna be a lot of lemonade," she sighed.
"That's what I said!" Izzy beamed.
"Come by Maretime Bay later," Sunny requested. "We need your input on whether to put Sprout on the moon for a couple centuries. Hooves-to-hearts."
"Hooves-to-hearts," they all chirped.
"What does that mean?" Kind☆ asked as they all hung up.
They awkwardly sighed out at the broken ruins of the city.
"I'm starving," Izzy suddenly piped up. "Any delis around here still standing?"
"End-a-da-world sandwiches, right heah, get your end-a-da-world sandwiches, life's too short right now not ta try one," came the immediate call from just down the street.
They looked at each other, shrugged, and headed down that way.